A judge in Missouri, USA, has ordered the immediate release of a man who spent 43 years in prison for the triple murder he did not commit.
Kevin Strickland, 62, is dark-skinned and convicted by a white panel of judges in 1979 of three murders in Kansas City. Then he was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Strickland pleaded not guilty and also had an alibi. Nor was there evidence linking him to the killings.
Prosecutors agreed earlier this year that he had been wrongfully convicted.
The 62-year-old has spent 43 years behind bars. That makes him one of the longest serving prisoners in the United States who has been wrongfully convicted, according to the National Innocence Registry.
Incorrectly assigned
The Strickland murders were wrongfully convicted, taking place in Kansas City, in April 1978.
Four people were shot dead, three of them were killed. Cynthia Douglas, who died in 2015, was the only survivor. In 1978, she testified that Strickland was at the scene when the triple murders occurred. Writes CNN.
She is said to have done so the next day after she became acquainted with two other abusers.
However, Strickland was not supposed to be recognized until after she was told that his hair matched her description of the shooter.
Over the next 30 years, according to CNN, I made a mistake and defined it incorrectly. She tried to get him released with the help of the Midwest Innocence Project.
The other two attackers identified at the crime scene pleaded guilty to premeditated murder and spent 10 years in prison.
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